First let me apologize for not writing more frequently. There are a number of excuses, not the least of which is that my computer completely crashed literally the day I started writing this post, nearly 4 weeks ago. The following is what I'd already put down:

As I wrote previously, we arrived to Tahiti through Taapuna Pass after a 38-hour overnight sail from Anse Amyot. Our passage was just about ideal, with winds that allowed us to fly our spinnaker most of the time. We pulled in just before sunset, and actually grabbed a mooring instead of anchoring. We weren’t exactly sure who’s mooring this was, but we were pretty certain we weren’t allowed to use it. Meh, just one night. Early the next morning we slipped the lines and found a good anchoring spot just north of Marina Taina. Tahiti harbor is unique in our travels in that you can actually just anchor for free right next to the marina there. We use the dinghy dock and throw our trash out on the marina premises. It’s definitely a good arrangement as far as we’re concerned.

We needed to anchor close to the marina because we had so much to do in Tahiti. Our sejour in Papeete was not a restful one, and we really hit the ground running. Let me recap…

After we’d fled the mooring ball scene and safely anchored, we dinghied in to the dock to speak with the folks at the marina office. I asked the man who greeted us about official paperwork, going to customs and immigration, and about getting duty free fuel. He directed us to fill out a form, and head to Faa’a Airport to visit Immigration. After, we’d have to go out to Motu Uta to do customs and get our duty free fuel permit. Finally, we were to visit the Papeete Harbormaster to hand him our form we’d just filled out. Stressed about visiting all of these places – in the rain of course – we left the marina to catch a bus to the airport.

We arrived to the airport after some confusion with the busses, and found Immigration. The man there asked if we were on a boat, and we confirmed that we are. We showed him our clearance papers from the Gambier Islands, where we’d entered the country in April. The immigration officer told us that we had already cleared in in the Gambier Islands, and that we were done with all of the official paperwork. We protested, stating what the man at the marina had just told us. The immigration official assured us that no, we are completely done, and would we PLEASE tell the people at the marina to stop sending yachties to him! Apparently the rules have changed recently. We had read about how complicated the officialdom is in French Polynesia, and we were ready to go through a million hoops to get everything done. Instead, immigration/customs were actually fully completed in the Gambiers. No need to go all the way out to Motu Uta to do customs – we in fact had a filled-out customs declaration form in our hands that we’d done in Rikitea back in April.

I asked the immigration officer about getting our visas extended. My best friend from home, Robert, will be joining us for 3 months beginning July 23rd. However, we have a 90-day visa that began on April 19th in the Gambier Islands. He sent us to the High Commissioner’s office downtown. So, we found a bus heading downtown and hopped on. We visited the High Commissioner’s office, but were told that Madame Mareva is only in office from 7:30 to noon. It was 12:14. We’d have to come back the following morning. So, we walked around downtown a bit, saw some sights, and then grabbed a bus back toward the marina. We stopped just shy of the marina at Carrefour – a large supermarket. The store is unbelievably different from anywhere we’d shopped since Panama. Provisioning is always a difficult task for us, and it’s really hard for Americans to imagine just how small and poorly stocked the stores around the world are. Carrefour is a whole different story. It’s basically a one-stop shop for just about anything you could want. We browsed a little, bought a couple beers, and walked back to the marina. A big Carrefour run could wait for now. We’d spend a lot of time there in the coming days…

Now, back to mid-July as I sit here adding to my previously started post...As it has been an EXCEEDINGLY long time since this all happened, and the thought of putting it all on paper this late after the fact hurts my brain, I'm going to quickly recap: we managed to get our visas extended after a couple of days of running around, back and forth between downtown Papeete and the marina, as well as some other locales. We did a large shopping at Carrefour and numerous smaller runs. All of that stuff was reasonably stressful, very inefficient, and not much fun. My mother recaps it well in her blog, as well as our nice stay with my sister, Katie, and brother-in-law Ben. You can read about that all on ANDIAMO NAPLES BLOG LINK

Like I said, I just can't bring myself to recap all of the happenings of the past month, especially since my mom did such a nice job of writing all about it on her blog! My apologies - I'm going to make a better effort to write a little more frequently now!